I’ll never forget the first time I sat naked, thigh-to-thigh on a wooden sauna bench with my boss. It was week one of a new job with a computer start-up near Heidelberg in Germany. I’m from Scotland, where socialising after work means going to the pub for drinks. I never dreamt it would involve standing outdoors with colleagues, snowflakes falling on my bare skin.

For me it was a seismic culture shock. But in Germany, Holland or Finland it’s not unusual to visit a sauna with colleagues. And in Finland it’s perfectly natural to have seen your boss without a stitch of clothing.

It’s quite normal to go to the sauna with your boss

“Finland is quite an equal country. We don’t have strict social classes,” says Katariina Styrman, chief executive officer of The Finnish Sauna Society in Helsinki. “It’s quite normal to go to the sauna with your boss. It’s a place where you should forget about titles and salaries.”